Melanie Sarantou (PhD) is Professor of Social Design at Kyushu University in Japan. She is also Adjunct Professor of social design at the University of Lapland, investigating how arts and narrative practices impact on marginalised women in communities in Namibia, Lapland, Russia and Australia. In her role as Research Fellow (2020 – 2023) she explored the role of arts in societies that exist on the margin of Europe in the European Commission-funded Horizon 2020 project titled ‘Action on the Margin: Arts as Social Sculpture’ (AMASS). Melanie was also the coordinator of the large AMASS consortium for three consecutive years. She is a member of the Service Design Research Group and her past research focused on social design and arts-based research in marginalised communities in Finland, Australia and Namibia. Her research and art explored concepts of marginality, which in this project is defined by conditions of isolation and migration, emphasised by the geography of the project in the arctic and far south. Her intense involvement in Namibian craft and design development spanned over two decades. Sarantou’s PhD in Visual Arts at the University of South Australia mapped Namibian craft and design worlds trough a postcolonial lens. Next to managing a fashion atelier and business for sixteen years, Sarantou also initiated the Fashion course as part of a BA Degree at the University of Namibia, complimented with a decade of fashion design lecturing.
